Labour Quotes

The problem we have is not Labour, in however it is configured.

The lowest stage of humanity is experienced when the individual must labour for a small pittance of wages from others.

Learn to labour and to wait.

I joined the Labour Party not because it was Left Wing, but because it was definitely internationalists and would seem to be the group in the Labour Party which would serve my purpose best for propaganda along internationalist lines.

I've been on the left of the Party since I joined it about 1934 and I haven't seen much reason for altering... I have always been a strong libertarian both inside the Labour Party and outside... what I want to seek to do over a period of course is to establish a Socialist society.

John Prescott has made the government look greedy and ridiculous. Labour is seen as the corrupt party. The government has been fulfilling the old rule that oppositions do not win elections, governments lose them.

To create a little flower is the labour of ages.

50 years from now we won't need as much human labour to do what manual workers do, so we should be able to take that extra productivity and put it to better use.

By Liberty I understand the Power which every Man has over his own Actions, and his Right to enjoy the Fruits of his Labour, Art, and Industry, as far as by it he hurts not the Society, or any Members of it, by taking from any Member, or by hindering him from enjoying what he himself enjoys. The Fruits of a Man's honest Industry are the just Rewards of it, ascertained to him by natural and eternal Equity, as is his Title to use them in the Manner which he thinks fit: And thus, with the above Limitations, every Man is sole Lord and Arbitrer of his own private Actions and Property.

Labour is ... not the only source of material wealth, i.e, of the use-values it produces. As William Petty says, Labour is the father of material wealth, the earth is its mother.

We want property, but property restored to its proper limits, that is to say, free distribution of the products of labour, property minus usury!

Labour-saving devices just make us try to cram more pointless activities into each day, rather than doing the important thing, which is to enjoy our life.

The Electric Monk was a labour-saving device, like a dishwasher or a video recorder... Electric Monks believed things for you, thus saving you what was becoming an increasingly onerous task, that of believing all the things the world expected you to believe.

Where there are millions upon millions of units of idle labour, it is no use thinking of labour-saving devices.

We labour at our daily work more ardently and thoughtlessly than is necessary to sustain our life because it is even more necessary not to have leisure to stop and think. Haste is universal because everyone is in flight from himself.

A small daily task, if it be really daily, will beat the labours of a spasmodic Hercules.

In Western Europe and North America some things are better than they were - at least relative to their moral nadirs - such as labour legislation, the opening of the professions to women, intolerance for domestic violence, but so much is still morally unacceptable - the weapons trade, cruel and unusual punishment, economic parasitism.

Crime is only the worst example, but it is a paradigm for other Labour policy disasters. No one tells the voters that crime is falling: let them stay scared senseless.

Philosophy, for Plato, is a kind of vision, the 'vision of truth'...Everyone who has done any kind of creative work has experienced, in a greater or less degree, the state of mind in which, after long labour, truth or beauty appears, or seems to appear, in a sudden glory - it may only be about some small matter, or it may be about the universe. I think that most of the best creative work, in art, in science, in literature, and in philosophy, has been a result of just such a moment.

The Bolshevists would blow up the fabric with high explosive, with horror. Others would pull down with the crowbars and with cranks--especially with cranks. . . . Sweating, slums, the sense of semi-slavery in labour, must go. We must cultivate a sense of manhood by treating men as men.

In thy discourse, if thou desire to please; All such is courteous, useful, new, or wittie: Usefulness comes by labour, wit byease; Courtesie grows in court; news in the citie.

We want to get full value out of labour so that we may be able to pay it full value. It is use - not conservation - that interests us.

When you cease from labour, fill up your time in reading, meditation, and prayer: and while your hands are labouring, let your heart be employed, as much as possible, in divine thoughts.

Caste is not just a division of labour, it is a division of labourers.

Those who labour in the earth are the chosen people of God, if ever he had a chosen, people, whose breasts he has made his peculiar deposit for substantial and genuine virtue.

The idea was that the record itself ['The Bones Of What You Believe' ] is a kind of labour of love for us - all our energy and all our passion and all the stuff we believed in is in that record, so you're kind of handing that off to other people, if that makes sense.

Bob Dylan, Nobel laureate. A new fact so shocking that even the year's most notable deaths have not outdone it for the volume (in both senses) of instant reaction; so divisive, it makes Brexit, the Labour leadership and the US Presidential election seem lesser ruptures.

Labour is the source of every blessing.

They best can judge a poet's worth, Who oft themselves have known The pangs of a poetic birth By labours of their own.

The problem is capitalism. The problem is that in order to sell seven billion people on the necessity of globalisation, we've created a moral universe where people who do not work to create profit are considered less than human, and used as surplus labour to drive down the cost of wages.

You don't get paid for the hour. You get paid for the value you bring to the hour.

Man preys on man; and you mourn for the idle tapestry that decorated a gothic pillar, and the dronish bell that summoned the fat priest to prayer. You mourn for the empty pageant of a name, when slavery flaps her wing, ... Why is our fancy to be appalled by terrific perspectives of a hell beyond the grave? - Hell stalks abroad; - the lash resounds on the slave's naked sides; and the sick wretch, who can no longer earn the sour bread of unremitting labour, steals to a ditch to bid the world a long good night.

Actually the royal family were very gracious and good to me. But I also found that the British establishment were never quite sure what to make of me. I was a Labour figure, but I'd come from a very middle-class background. In one sense I offended both traditional right and traditional left. But I thought that was no bad thing.

'Dignity of Labour' is a subject to be learnt from Australia!

The Labour Party of today has fits of horrors of the very thought of somebody like me might saying that they bought in white Australia. But I believe they did.

So our problem is not Labour, it is us, is making us attractive enough to gain disillusioned Labour support and to compete effectively with the Lib Dems for those loose votes.

What made women's labour particularly attractive to the capitalists was not only its lower price but also the greater submissiveness of women. The capitalists speculate on the two following factors: the female worker must be paid as poorly as possible and the competition of female labour must be employed to lower the wages of male workers as much as possible. In the same manner the capitalists use child labour to depress women's wages and the work of machines to depress all human labour.

Contrast that with the call of the Liberal Democrats in April, when they were prepared to call upon the British people to participate in a 24-hour strike. It shows how far to the right the Labour Party's gone.

I was elected leader of our party, for a new kind of politics, by 60% of Labour members and supporters. The need for that different approach now is greater than ever.

It is to be feared that those who emigrate to New South Wales, generally anticipate too great facility in their future operations and certainty of success in conducting them; but they should recollect that competency cannot be obtained without labour.

These modern means of communication are one reason why I recently opposed the Government's decision to grant MPs a new communications allowance. With new technology giving us the opportunity to communicate directly with voters very cheaply, why did Labour MPs vote for a £10,000 allowance to tell voters what a good job they do?

All my experiments in Ahimsa have taught me that nonviolence in practice means common labour with the body.

A too great disproportion among the citizens weakens any state. Every person, if possible, ought to enjoy the fruits of his labour, in a full possession of all the necessities, and many of the conveniences of life. No one can doubt, but such an equality is most suitable to human nature, and diminishes much less from the happiness of the rich than it adds to that of the poor.

Is it better to work out consciously and critically one's own conception of the world and thus, in connection with the labours of one's own brain, choose one's sphere of activity, take an active part in the creation of the history of the world, be one's own guide, refusing to accept passively and supinely from outside the moulding of one' own personality?

When people are too comfortable, it is not possible to restrain them within the bounds of their duty? They may be compared to mules who, being accustomed to burdens, are spoilt by rest rather than labour.

The gain in self-confidence of having accomplished a tiresome labour is immense.

Every man wishes to pursue his occupation and to enjoy the fruits of his labours and the produce of his property in peace and safety, and with the least possible expense. When these things are accomplished, all the objects for which government ought to be established are answered.

A good man will extend his munificence to the industrious poor of all persuasions reduced by age, infirmity, or accident; to thosewho labour under incurable maladies; and to the youth of either sex, who are capable of beginning the world with advantage, but have not the means.

Two thirds of the work in the world is done by women. Women own 1 percent of the assets. Young women are sold into prostitution, forced labour, premature marriage, forced to have children they don't want or they can't support. They're abused, raped, beaten up. Domestic violence is supposed to be a cultural problem. They are the first victims of war, fundamentalism, conflict, recession. And young women who have access to education and health care and have resources think that everything was done, they don't have to worry.

Anarchism is a definite intellectual current in the life of our times, whose adherents advocate the abolition of economic monopolies and of all political and social coercive institutions within society. In place of the present capitalistic economic order Anarchists would have a free association of all productive forces based upon co-operative labour, which would have as its sole purpose the satisfying of the necessary requirements of every member of society, and would no longer have in view the special interest of privileged minorities within the social union.